That's from the student newspaper at UA, which has been putting the commercial papers to shame, with their coverage of the disaster.

And the disaster is epic and ongoing.

NBC-Universal had their whole A-Team here for a few days after the storm. Brian Williams, Lester Holt, Jim Cantore, etc. Then Osama bin Laden got killed, and now it's like it never happened. Well it did happen. It's still a major event, even if it's no longer a "story."

And I don't mean to make it all about Tuscaloosa. Countless communities in Alabama and Mississippi have been devastated.

But I couldn't believe what I saw Thursday when I drove around the back roads and alleys of the area.

Very large slices of Tuscaloosa have been erased from the map. Totally wiped out. Nothing there.

And I know they are here to help, and we couldn't get by without them, but still, it is very unsettling to see so many military vehicles everywhere you look, especially since it looks like we were hit with a nuclear weapon.

It's surreal and dystopian.

I was a little kid back in 1974, I think, when what we considered to be a major tornado hit Tuscaloosa. If I recall correctly, one person was killed in that storm. That very unlucky person was a maid in a motel called the Scottish Inn, I think.

On that scale, this storm was 41 times worse, so far. In terms of infrastructure, it's probably more like 400 or 4000 times worse. I'm not kidding.

And we are going to need the help of the federal government.

It's probably not appropriate to talk about this kind of stuff at this time. And I know that Alabama routinely votes 60% republican. But just so you know, the city of Tuscaloosa leans liberal. Tuscaloosa went for Obama over McCain. And Mayor Walt Maddox used to work for the state teacher's union, so he probably isn't a Republican.

I'm saddened that the wind suddenly sucked out all the energy from his progressive plans, and now his effort will be directed toward digging us out of this hole. At least we got the amphitheater built, and it survived.

I guess I'll let you all go now. So sorry to ramble on like that. I intended to post the excerpt from the CW, and be done. But I'm just so wound up with anxiety. It's really a mess down here.

 According to a 2001 HUD report, 1.14 million affordable housing units were lost between 1997 and 1999. There are many reasons for this loss, but among other causes, when HUD privatized the building of new units, the contracts stipulated that, at the end of the 20-year contract, the owner could opt to convert the units from subsidized to market value. As each development reaches this 20-year mark, many units are lost to conversion from low-income to market. http://www.cbpp.org/files/2-1-07hous2.pdf and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/hud-is-tryi...

 During the negotiations to demolish the former New Orleans St. Thomas Housing Project in 2002, developers started out promising that 50% of the units would be affordable. But in the end only 9% were affordable one study showed. http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/news/0218.html

 In Atlanta in August of 2010, the housing authority severely underestimated the number of people who would show up to apply for Section 8 housing. There are only 15,000 available units in Georgia, When 30,000 applicants arrived, some who had been waiting in line for 2 days, the office was unable to handle the response, and 62 people were injured. http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/housing-crisis-reaches-...

 According to a 2001 HUD report, 1.14 million affordable housing units were lost between 1997 and 1999. There are many reasons for this loss, but among other causes, when HUD privatized the building of new units, the contracts stipulated that, at the end of the 20-year contract, the owner could opt to convert the units from subsidized to market value. As each development reaches this 20-year mark, many units are lost to conversion from low-income to market. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/hud-is-tryi...

 In many cities, there are no longer even waiting lists for subsidized housing. In Atlanta, although there were no vacancies available, an announcement was made that they would open a waiting list for one day. Thirty thousands people arrived to apply, some in line for days. 15K applications were handed out, and 62 people were taken to the hospital suffering from heat stroke. http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/housing-crisis-reaches-...

I know I had no idea it was this bad. Thanks for posting about it here, but could you repost it in a standalone please? More people need to know about it, or have another chance to see it if they missed it before.

During Katrina, we had a lot of people come here from along the Gulf Coast and NOLA and many stayed in a makeshift facility in the UA fitness center. I haven't heard what's happening to the displaced here, but that's a very good question.

40. Thank you. And, I hope you will poke around and see if you can find out.

These are people who get forgotten.... as you can see even from this thread, it isn't a popular topic. We need to make them our business.

And after media attention dies down (if there even *is* any media attention... it looks like the only ones who wrote about this are students!), they fade from view and without followup, the worst can happen.

After Katrina, when the people were sent all over the country, as the media attention died down, they were quietly sent from the places where they had been "stashed", and with no place to go and no way to survive, the number of suicides went sky high. As progressives, we need to insert ourselves in this issue, to make sure that this doesn't keep happening. Our poor people deserve better in the richest country in the world!

I've been looking for any msm coverage on the twisters and haven't seen any in a long time. Along with the Mississippi River flooding. I guess the total destruction of cities and towns in America isn't as interesting as what's happenng in Lybia.

Geez, what are the food prices going to be like next year after all this farmland has been flooded?

Imagine if all those new buildings were to be built green. And accessible (universal design). And transit-friendly (I'm imagining a road and bus line right down the middle of the path, called -- you guessed it -- "Tornado Alley". ) Maybe then us latte liberals on the coasts would stop crinkling up our noses when we hear the word "Alabama"!

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